Murtaza wearing his homemade shirt – which sparked the online search for the young fan

The online search for the boy was sparked by a single photo that went viral, showing him wearing the homemade shirt made from a striped blue plastic bag, imitating the famous Argentina strip.

Claims initially followed that the boy was an Iraqi Kurd and that the Barcelona star wanted to find the young fan to give him a proper shirt.

But the source of the online rumours claiming that the picture was taken in Dohuk, Iraq, later admitted making it up.

Murtaza was finally identified as the boy in the picture after his uncle, Azim Ahmadi, an Afghan living in Australia, put BBC Trending in touch with his brother, Arif – the young devoted Messi fan’s father.

Murtaza’s father says he is too poor to afford a real Messi shirt

The Ghazni farmer confirmed his son was the boy who captured people’s imaginations worldwide and added that Murtaza was “extremely happy”.

Messi is a goodwill ambassador for the United Nations Children’s Emergency Fund (Unicef) and the agency helped to get the shirt to the boy, posting the picture of Murtaza on its Facebook page.

Messi also sent some extra shirts, which may now be snapped up by Murtaza’s family, including his oldest brother Hamayon, who published the original pictures on Facebook, which then went viral.

It’s not clear what’s happened to the plastic bag, which may now have been retired.

ABOUT: Nana Kwesi Coomson

An Entrepreneur and Philanthropist. Editor-in-Chief of www.233times.com. A Senior Journalist with Ghanaian Chronicle Newspaper. An alumnus of Adisadel College where he read General Arts. He holds first degree in Bachelor of Arts from the University of Ghana; Political Science (major) and History (minor). He has also pursued MSc Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Energy with Public Relations (PR) at the Robert Gordon University in the United Kingdom. He is a 2018 Mandela Washington Fellow (YALI) who studied at Clark Atlanta University on the Business and Entrepreneurship track. His mentors are Rupert Murdoch, Warren Buffet, Sam Jonah, Kwaku Sakyi Addo and Piers Morgan